Yesterday the highly commendable Pacific Justice Institute told the story of how some California charter schools are taking education to the next level... brain-numbing.

In short, as stated in PJI's news release, "a public charter school in San Francisco took its first-graders on an
unusual field trip [last] Friday - to a lesbian wedding at City Hall." It gets better:

The first-graders, from Creative Arts Charter School, watched as their
teacher, Erin Carder, married her partner Kerri McCoy, in a ceremony
officiated by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. The children were given
rose petals to scatter and bubbles to blow in celebration. Some also
wore "No on 8" political buttons. The school's interim director stood
by her decision to allow the field trip, calling the lesbian wedding a
"teachable moment" which she did not consider controversial....

...Prop. 8... would restore the definition of traditional marriage in California.

I don't bring this up merely for its shock value. Sadly, to many readers (especially those in the Bay area) this blatant liberal agenda is not surprising.

Yet the zealous and indoctrinating behavior employed by some homosexual activists is alarming. And somehow it's taken center stage in education. The classroom has expanded beyond the walls of reading, writing and arithmetic (as if that weren't enough) to cross into the forbidden territory of political activism. This shameless use of pliable young minds hardly qualifies as a "teachable moment."

Rather, students function as pawns in the hands of their educators... and all at the taxpayer's expense. Where is the vanguard of individuality in such an education system? Further still, where is the foundational unbiased teaching of the truth, which assists young minds in shaping their own opinions? I hardly imagine that the students returned to school following their little "field trip" for a lesson on the detriments of the gay/lesbian lifestyle. After all, we wouldn't want to overwhelm the little minds with too much controversial truth, now would we?

Comments:

Brian, sorry if I seemed to be obscuring the issue, but I thought I was pretty clear with "the teacher took underage children to an event to which at least some of their parents would have had religious and political objections."
Which part of that is indirect? I think the point is obvious: The field trip was a direct violation of families' religious liberties.

Posted By: Gina Dalfonzo on October 16, 2008 1:45 PM

Brian--
For a movement that claims to be concerned about people being saddled with shame they don't deserve, y'all sure do bring up the Loving decision a lot, thereby implying that gay marriage opponents are the same as the people who set police dogs on the Selma marchers.
Sorry, but that won't hold water, and I for one am not going to take it.
Marriage between different races has probably been going on ever since there were races, and it's been going on here in America at least since John Rolfe married Pochahontas in the early 17th Century.
But marriage between homosexuals has never been allowed by any society, no matter how it was structured or how it regarded homosexual behavior, until the last decade of the 20th Century.
There's a reason for that. When a a white man marries a black woman or a black man marries a white woman, or an Asian woman (etc., ad nauseum), it's a man and a woman marrying and becoming one flesh as God described in Genesis 2 and reaffirmed in Matthew 19. When a black man "marries" a white man, or a white man "marries" an Asian man, or a white man (etc., ad nauseum) it's a man marrying a man and there is no "one flesh" (any more than you can connect two male connectors while hooking up an electronic system) and the chapter that provides God's view of this ritual is Romans 1.
In other words, this...
http://images.inmagine.com/img/brandxpictures/x278/bxp69029.jpg
...and this...
http://media.collegepublisher.com/media/paper771/stills/6jhz5795.jpg
...are not, have not been, and will never be the same thing.
Therefore, this field trip was not a teachable moment. It was, at best, a propaganda moment.
Yet, until very recently, not one type of society, no matter what the form of government, no matter what sort of place they gave God or gods, had any sort of provision for two males or two females to marry, and they likely would have found the idea ludicrous. That even goes for societies that found homosexual behavior to be acceptable.

Posted By: Chris Clukey on October 16, 2008 10:52 AM

Brian, I think one of the crucial points to remember here is that the teacher took underage children to an event to which at least some of their parents would have had religious and political objections.
Think what would have happened if, say, a teacher had taken a group of eight-year-olds to an evangelical church service, complete with altar call.

Posted By: Gina Dalfonzo on October 15, 2008 6:42 PM

Honest question: Would a field trip to witness the first marriages after Loving v Virginia have been a teachable moment?
That is, are you opposed to field trips to witness historic events or are you simply offended by this particular moment in history?

Posted By: Brian on October 15, 2008 6:15 PM

I'm still waiting for the part where it gets better.

Posted By: Samuel X on October 15, 2008 5:26 PM

Gina, I'm not sure if you're indirectly answering my question or starting a new train of thought.
The response you give changes the educational potential. However, what if it were a teacher in China who took students weeks after Christians had finally been given official permission to practice? I think that's a more accurate comparison. There could perhaps be some objections, but it is clearly a moment in history that all could learn from.
But back in America for a moment, and staying on the topic of historical moments as field trips: I'm still not sure if the objection is broad or specific.
Any takers?